I lift my chin, stare out at the dead mall and the watching shadows, and let the last of the run drain out of my body.
I didn’t win. I didn’t lose. I was removed. Neutralized. Erased.
Someone steps in close behind me and says, “Let’s go.”
And the Rot swallows me whole.
17
ARMEN
The Hunt ends without ceremony.At least for us.
It always does.
No signal. No announcement. Just the gradual draining of noise, like the Rot itself deciding it’s done paying attention. The runners are accounted for, including the winner. This is when the corridors settle. The mall exhales into something quieter and heavier than panic.
I feel the shift before I see it.
Power replaces motion. Control replaces speed. What’s left isn’t urgency, it’s placement.
That’s when I go to her.
She’s laid out on the concrete where the old mall map used to be mounted, the outline of it still visible on the wall behind her like a ghost of order. Some unlucky Runt scrubbed the floor recently. Poorly. The smell of disinfectanthasn’t had time to settle, and it fights with the Rot’s usual stench of metal and old water and God knows what else.
She wakes without moving.
Most of them don’t.
Most women jerk awake, suck in air, test restraints, cry out before they know who’s listening. She doesn’t. Her eyes open slow, deliberate. She keeps her breathing shallow, like she’s counting before she knows why she’s counting.
I don’t step closer yet.
I watch.
Her wrists are bound behind her back, clean work, not cutting circulation. Ankles too. Enough to limit, not enough to punish. Someone wanted her conscious. Someone wanted her intact.
She tests nothing. That’s the first tell.
Her gaze moves instead, over the ceiling, wall, and floor. Inventory taken without panic. When her eyes land on me, they hold, studying my face like she’s trying to see beyond my mask.
No flinch.
I’ve seen fear wear a lot of disguises. Shock. Anger. False bravado. This isn’t any of those. This is control clamped tight around something screaming underneath.
She notices the others next.
Three women along the opposite wall. One slumped, one rocking, one staring at nothing with tears cutting clean tracks through grime on her face. They’re bound differently. One with cuffs that bite. One with rope that’s too tight on purpose. One barely restrained at all.
Levels.
She notices that, too. I see it in the way her she grinds her teeth, not from pain but calculation. She understands hierarchy the moment it’s presented.
Good.
The lights are low now. Strips along the floor hum faintly, outlining paths she no longer gets to navigate. Somewhere farther down the corridor, a voice murmurs instructions. Somewhere else, metal scrapes, something heavy dragged into place.
The Rot rearranges itself after a Hunt. Always does.
